“If reforms were implemented today, three-quarters of exploited fisheries worldwide could reach population goals within 10 years, and 98 percent by mid-century,” according to a report in PNAS co-authored by SAFS Professors Ray Hilborn, Trevor Branch, and Research Scientist Mike Melnychuk.

The Seattle Times Reports “Puget Sound salmon are on drugs — Prozac, Advil, Benadryl, Lipitor, even cocaine. Those drugs and dozens of others are showing up in the tissues of juvenile chinook, researchers have found, thanks to tainted wastewater discharge.”
A research team of NOAA and UW scientists, including SAFS’ professor Dr. Graham Young, have documented levels of over 80 “chemicals of emerging concern”, pharmaceuticals and personal care products in estuarine waters and in juvenile chinook salmon and Pacific staghorn sculpin at sites in south Puget Sound impacted by discharge from wastewater treatment plants.

A new article, titled “Conservation challenges of predator recovery”, has been accepted for publication into Conservation Letters: A journal for the Society for Conservation Biology. This article is a result of the collaboration of SAFS post-doc Kristin Marshall, SMEA Professor Ryan Kelly, NOAA scientist and SAFS affiliate faculty Eric Ward, and NOAA scientists Jameal Samhouri and Adrian Stier.
Abstract
Predators are critical components of ecosystems.

A new study, lead by SAFS Prof. Tim Essington and published on April 6 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “implicates fishing in the collapse of forage fish stocks and recommends risk-based management tools that would track a fishery’s numbers and suspend fishing when necessary.” Read the full story on UW Today >>

Several in the SAFS community have been working on a management strategy evaluation for Bristol Bay sockeye salmon. Findings were presented to the Alaska Board of Fish resulting in changes to seasonal management targets, reported by The Bristol Bay Times.
Last week the Department of Fish and Game adopted a wider range with raised upper ends for sockeye escapement goals in most Bristol Bay rivers.

This summer SAFS graduate student Emma Timmins-Schiffman along with Bryan Bartley (Bioengineering), and Lauren Vandepas (Biology) – have mentored a group of high school students from local Seattle schools. The students have accomplished some pretty impressive research projects over the course of the summer as they learn about interactions between the environment and local biota. On August 26 at 4 pm, the students will be presenting their research in a research symposium in FSH 102.

As part of a monthly UnSeminar Series there will be a discussion June 27th 9:30 AM in the FTR 103 on Ocean Acidification.
The Open Notebook UnSeminar Series is focused on bringing together disparate research groups interested in sharing experiences, collaboration, and discussing issues related to large data sets, reproducibility, and science.
Everyone is welcome to attend. There will likely be a few slides, but primarily this is an informal discussion of what researchers are doing and how we might collaborate better.

SAFS graduate student Juliana Houghton will be speaking at Town Hall this Wednesday, March 6, 2013, from 6:00 – 7:00PM.
This season’s second edition of UW Science Now, which trains University of Washington graduate students to communicate their research to the general public and introduces that public to cutting-edge research in our own backyard, addresses the impact of San Juan whale-watching on the whales themselves.

The School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences is dedicated to sustaining healthy marine and freshwater environments. Our faculty conduct innovative research from the organism to the ecosystem scale, and are recognized leaders in aquatic biology, sustainable fisheries management and aquatic resource conservation.